MUNA: "The Concerts are a Breeze Because we Feel Carried by the Fans"

Things could have gone either way for MUNA after their second album, 2019’s Saves The World. At the start of 2020, they found themselves staring down the barrel of the global pandemic, clutching an album they couldn’t tour. To top it off, they were dropped by their label, RCA Records.

It prompted a lot of soul-searching from the LA trio – made up of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson – who had to decide whether to keep going or give up. A lot of hard conversations were had, they tell Music Feeds, admitting with a laugh that the three of them are very “therapised” individuals. In the end, after realising that MUNA still held precious meaning to them, they kept going.

MUNA signed to Phoebe Bridgers‘ Saddest Factory Records and released their buoyant third album, MUNA, in 2022. Where MUNA’s two previous records dealt in heartbreak and yearning, MUNA was a triumphant reclamation of queer joy, spearheaded by singles like the flowing, Bridgers-assisted ‘Silk Chiffon’ and the strident ‘What I Want’.

MUNA – ‘What I Want’

Gavin, Maskin and McPherson suddenly found themselves in a sphere of fame they hadn’t experienced before, even dropping by The Late Late Show with James Corden to perform ‘Silk Chiffon’ alongside Phoebe Bridges in a prom tux and crown.

To some, MUNA might not feel radical or punk – these are some of the most pristine and glittering pop tracks of recent years – but for the queer community, as the trio has said in interviews, feeling unbridled joy is one of the most radical things you can do.

We caught up with MUNA over Zoom from LA before they hopped on a plane for a string of Australian dates, including supporting Lorde on her Solar Power tour and performing at the WorldPride closing concert.

Music Feeds: After 2019’s Saves The World, there were some conversations within the band about whether to keep going, because that album maybe hadn’t gone the way you envisioned. Sitting here now after the huge success of MUNA, you must be so thankful you made the decision to keep going.

Katie Gavin: I think a big part of MUNA has been… we’re all three very honest people. We’re very purposeful. Like, we all care more about having a source of meaning in our life. And I think in the conversations about deciding to keep going, part of it was just that MUNA was still the thing, for all three of us, that was the biggest source of meaning, even if it wasn’t always easy.

And we don’t expect it to always be easy. Even now when we’ve had this kind of windfall and gotten to a level in our career where we weren’t sure we would ever get to, that comes with its own challenges. I’m sure that there are gonna be more existential talks ahead of us – that’s just who we are as humans.

MF: There’s a lightness and euphoria to this record, a beautiful escapism. It’s also a bit of a diversion from your earlier records. Was there a concerted effort to go a bit happier?

Katie: It’s just ironic that it worked out that way. When we were making the first album, Naomi and I were going through our breakup, and then I wasn’t really in another happy relationship until the pandemic. I was just making a lot of bad choices from when Naomi and I broke up until about 2020.

So, even though [the pandemic] was a time when so many people felt isolated and frustrated and unable to connect in the way that they wanted to, I guess I was exploring intimacy in a way that I hadn’t in a really long time.

We would definitely identify with the idea of your capacity for joy being very connected to your capacity for going through hard shit and facing grief and facing negative emotions. For me, I had to do a lot of work around self-esteem stuff before I was really ready to have the intimacy that I really craved.

MUNA – ‘Silk Chiffon’ (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)

MF: A lot of these songs are such huge anthems. ‘What I Want’, for example, which has that great line: “I wanna dance in the middle of a gay bar”. How have you found the shift in those songs from the studio to a live setting? Have they reached their final form in a way?

Katie: Yeah, and that’s happened a couple of times with us as a project and it’s always really cool to see. On our first record, we have that song, ‘I Know A Place’, where we’re talking about having a place where you can feel really safe to express yourself and be yourself. And we find that place a lot of times like in our concerts. ‘What I Want’ definitely feels that way.

The thing that maybe we weren’t expecting is just how many people are singing every word of the songs back with us, to the point where the concerts are kind of a breeze because we feel just very carried by the fans.

MF: Are there any particular moments from the album that people are connecting to in the live setting that perhaps you didn’t expect them to?

Josette Maskin: There are some special moments throughout the show that the fans have really taken and run with. When we played ‘Home By Now’ at the Wiltern in LA, there’s the line, “Why is it so hot in LA?” And it was late October and the room was electric and everyone yelled that line. It’s just a really unifying experience.

MF: Shifting labels is a big deal for a lot of bands, but you’ve found a home at Saddest Factory with Phoebe Bridgers. What is it about the connection between the two of you that makes it work?

Katie: There are a couple of things. The basis is just mutual respect. We have so much respect for Phoebe, not just as an artist, not just as a label runner, but as a human being. Our whole team is full of people that we just genuinely love – and not only like working with, but like hanging out with, and that’s so rare. Phoebe came into our lives initially just as a fan of our music and we were also fans of hers.

Once we got dropped by RCA… [going to an indie label] was something we had been thinking about for a while, because of the way that we actually function as a band. We sound very major label because Naomi’s such a pristine producer, and so it can sound like we have a fat recording budget, but we do a lot with just the three of us and a big chunk of time in our little basement studio.

MUNA – ‘I Know a Place’

MF: You’ve now been playing together for 10 years. What are the biggest ways you’ve changed as a unit over those 10 years?

Josette: I think we’ve just all become just more realised as individuals. We’ve grown up together and I think [that] really streamlines our communication. We can squash an argument in a moment. And we’re very therapised, as individuals who live in Los Angeles. We started as kids and every day we’re getting older and older – that just keeps happening.

MF: ‘Silk Chiffon’ is such a powerful song – so beautiful in its simplicity and its joyousness. It must be wonderful to see how a song like that has become so precious to an entire community?

Katie: That’s really the honour of our lives. If nothing else happens from here, it’s all good because we love being a part of this community.

To feel claimed by these humans that you love and to feel like you’ve given people who have been through so much as a community something that helps a little bit and that heals a little bit… It’s kind of what I was saying about having a sense of meaning in our lives. Like, who gets that? It’s really amazing that we get to be a part of that.

Naomi McPherson: I’ll add something on top of Katie – we’re still hoping that things will happen [laughs].